When You Just Can’t – Even – Grace! Jenny Price

Life is fuzzy. Blurred in lines of love and grief and joy and fear and hope, surrounded with clouds sometimes. Clouds that flow with ease and grace over all of life’s circumstances. Not bothered by what’s beneath them.

Relationships swirl around us – within us – above us- below us – and we can’t manage them. We aren’t managers – but BE(ers).

We will: Be held. And hurt. Be loved. And left. Sometimes.

Marriage. That final. All encompassing relationship. The ONE WE ALL MUST FIND or happiness will not be. It’s a blender of our present and our not yet future. A blast of our pasts splattered on the walls of our hearts and our home. It soars or it sours. Depends on the day.

And by the way – it’s not the end all and the be all relationship. We must find that in The One and The Only.

Parenthood. The deepest joys and the darkest griefs and the loneliest fears – that you’d never tell your poor children – or they’d run – they’d run so fast – because they’d know you were not fit to parent. And yet, that is what makes you perfectly matched to be theirs. That you don’t know. That you won’t be.

Perfect.

Perfect isn’t the goal. Grace is.

Grace in life.

Grace in all our relationships.

Grace in our internal thoughts – those we can’t share out loud – not even between our own two ears – but Someone Already Knows – and there is still. Steady Grace.

Grace in our marriages. Give it. Receive it. Hope for it. Believe on another for it. It’s not yours to muster. And it’s an all access gift. Yours to give. Even when it’s not deserved.

Grace in our parenting. Dropping the facade of expectations. And embracing instead the belief that your best version of you today is giving the best love it ever has.

Grace when we fall. Grace when they fall. It’s all grace or it’s no grace at all.

It’s like how much your dog loves you. It’s ridiculous, right?

We leave each and every day of the school year. All of us. Leave her alone in an empty house. And one by one. We enter. And the greeting we get is “I’ve missed you sooooooo much! I’ve loved you from the beginning of all of creation and I will keep loving you beyond the ends of the earth! And I will lick your face off too – to prove that love” – over and over. One by one. Each of us. Loved.

Even though. Every single day. We leave her behind.

You can read this piece and just make us – ME – out to be a bad dog- owner. You’d be fairly right there. I’m better with humans but JoJo is pretty content. Or, you can go love and be loved like she loves us.

We don’t deserve it. Not a single one of us attends to her as we could. And yet, there she is – waiting to adore us.

It’s how HE LOVES too. It’s so beyond our capacity – on our best best best days added up and multiplied by millions – our “fathoming of his love” – it’s a grain of sand – not even – compared to every particle of Creation that He made.

When faith is your bucket and grace is your fountain, your vision of life will be less fuzzy. Circumstances will still astound you.